Sword of Light: Humanoid Self-Propelled Artillery

Chapter 300 Mine Detection
However, four or five seconds is not fast for a grenade. After all, it takes time for a grenade to explode after being thrown. For example, if a grenade is thrown at a speed of 20 meters per second, it will take three seconds just for the distance it travels to reach a distance of 60 meters.

Therefore, setting the detonation time of a hand grenade to five seconds is not a problem. However, landmines are different from hand grenades. Landmines are required to explode instantly. If they explode after smoking for five seconds like hand grenades, then soldiers who are tripped or mine-clearing engineers will have enough time to escape the blast radius of the hand grenade.

Therefore, the pineapple grenade needs to be modified by removing the delayed fuse and making it explode immediately upon release, so that it can be transformed from a hand grenade into a landmine.

However, that's not all. When making a tripwire grenade, the tripwire rope must be extended to a distance of two meters, and the tripwire of the tripwire grenade must be placed in front of the pineapple grenade.

Wang Gensheng did this in order to counter the US military's landmine detectors.

Indeed, the widespread use of landmines has spurred the continuous development of mine detection technology and equipment. After the advent of anti-personnel mines, mine-clearing engineers were deployed to the battlefield, and their weapons were called mine detectors.

Mine detectors, shaped like steel rods, are used to detect landmines by inserting them into the covering material to contact the mine body. While they can prevent soldiers from being killed by landmines to some extent, their slow detection speed cannot meet the operational requirements of quickly clearing minefields and opening up passages. The military urgently needs a personal mine detector that can quickly locate landmines.

In 1934, the Soviet military engineer Kudemov pioneered the development of the world's first handheld electronic mine detector for individual soldiers—the IMP-1 mine detector.

However, for every step the devil takes, the devil takes another. To counter metal detectors, the Japanese used a large number of wooden landmines in the early stages of World War II. These landmines, with wood as their outer shell, were called "hidden mines" by sappers. Similarly, the stone mines used by the Japanese army and civilians during the War of Resistance against Japan rendered the Japanese army's metal mine detectors ineffective.

After World War II, countries around the world began to use plastic shells and non-metallic components to manufacture landmines, which rendered traditional individual metal mine detectors obsolete.

Therefore, in order to solve the problem of detecting non-metallic landmines, countries around the world began to explore new mine detection technologies and methods.

For example, utilizing the differences in dielectric constants of materials, the US military developed a non-metallic high-frequency mine detector in the late 1950s. However, this type of mine detector was not only effective against landmines; it was easily affected by tree roots, rocks, and other debris in the soil, generating false alarm signals. Later, non-metallic mine detectors based on pulse radar, infrared imaging, acoustic vibration, nuclear quadrupole resonance, and neutron technologies emerged, finally solving this problem.

Miguo's HSTAMIDS handheld tripod mine detection system can detect mines at a distance of three meters and accurately report their location.

Handheld mine detectors are easy to operate, but their detection speed is slow. Therefore, vehicle-mounted and airborne mine detectors have emerged. The Austrian Hieber CAMCOPTER UAV-based detection system, consisting of an airborne platform, mission control unit, and audio sensor control unit, is a powerful tool for minefield detection missions.

In addition, it's worth mentioning that biological mine detection is also a type of non-metallic mine detection technology. In some countries, mine detection dogs have been incorporated into engineering units.

Compared to mine-detecting dogs, mine-detecting rats are lighter and won't die even if they accidentally step on a mine. They are highly adaptable to their environment and can work safely even in harsh minefields. They have a keen sense of smell, and with training, they can identify explosives with 100% accuracy. This provides a new approach for efficient mine detection. The purpose of mine clearance in wartime is to open safe passages. In this case, detonating or triggering mines is the most common method. To reduce casualties among mine-clearing personnel, England installed rolling mine-clearing devices on tanks towards the end of World War I. During World War II, various mine-clearing devices based on tank platforms emerged, such as the "Scorpion" type strike mine-clearing device and digging and demolition mine-clearing devices. These mine-clearing devices played a certain role, but their effectiveness was limited due to their bulky structure.

With the development of solid-fuel rocket technology, Ying, Mi, Su and others developed rocket mine-clearing vehicles and rocket detonators, which can open up a path hundreds of meters long at once, significantly improving mine-clearing efficiency.

However, before Wang Gensheng traveled through time, someone had already invented an unmanned mine-clearing robot, using robots to replace manual mine-clearing.

Since we have mine-clearing machinery and robots, why is manual mine clearance still necessary? Because mechanized mine-clearing equipment will specify the mine-clearing rate in its combat technical performance specifications, and no mine-clearing equipment can achieve a 100% mine-clearing rate.

In real life, no one wants to step into an area with even just one landmine remaining. Currently, the only way to achieve 100% mine clearance is through manual demining.

However, mine clearance is indeed dangerous, and this danger can come from a variety of factors.

Landmines are of various types. During wartime, minefields are often located in areas of confrontation between enemy and friendly forces. Within a certain area, mines are often laid by both sides, resulting in the coexistence of multiple types of mines and various types of abandoned munitions. This difficulty in discerning the patterns and types of mines laid inevitably brings considerable challenges to the subsequent clearing of minefields.

Moreover, the time span is large. Some minefields have a time span of decades, and due to natural factors such as vegetation growth, rain erosion, landslides, and mudslides, the location and performance of landmines have changed. This requires demining soldiers to survey every inch of the minefield.

The terrain is very complex. Some minefields, especially those along the border, are located in mountainous areas with jagged rocks, crisscrossing ravines, and dense vegetation. Not to mention large demining machinery, even small demining robots have difficulty operating in some areas. In addition, the interweaving and intertwining of grass and tree roots make it very likely that old and volatile landmines will detonate at the slightest touch.

Booby traps are difficult to identify. While the types and performance of landmines are limited, the methods of burying them are countless. The arrangement and combination of various landmines result in a wide variety of booby traps. After years of weathering, the triggering mechanisms of some booby traps become even more unpredictable. All of this requires demining personnel to be extremely careful and diligent in their efforts.

Detecting mines is difficult, clearing them is even more difficult, and completely eliminating the threat of mines is the most difficult of all. In view of this, relevant international mine conventions have imposed restrictions on mines and their use. Many countries, while developing new types of mines, are increasingly focusing on giving them self-destruct, self-disabling, and self-disabling mechanisms.

The reason Wang Gensheng placed the tripwire of the tripwire mine in front of the mine was naturally a layout designed for mine clearance.
It should be noted that the metal detectors used by the US military, which are used to detect landmines, are a good one or two meters long. Therefore, Wang Gensheng only needed to move the tripwire of the tripwire mine to the front.

As a result, the mine-clearing equipment soldiers would sometimes trigger landmines and be blown up before they even found them.

(End of this chapter)